


Swan Song

by nympheline



Category: De vilde Svaner | The Wild Swans - Hans Christian Andersen, Die sechs Schwäne | The Six Swans
Genre: Gen, Self-Sacrifice, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nympheline/pseuds/nympheline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say “seven brothers,” which is a lie; and they say their sister saved them at the cost of only three children, two mothers, and one voice; and it is lies, lies, lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swan Song

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [emmadelosnardos's photoset](http://emmadelosnardos.tumblr.com/post/63695238478/nicol-vizioli-the-red-list) of [Nicol Vizioli's](http://www.nicolvizioli.com) work.

They say “seven brothers,” which is a lie; and they say their sister saved them at the cost of only three children, two mothers, and one voice; and it is lies, lies, lies.

Once upon a time there lived seven children, and the truth of it is that it does not matter if they were boys, or girls, or neither, or both. There were seven children and one curse; and one sister with a sacrifice for every day her siblings lived as swans.

A pure, human quarter of an hour had they seven, every night at twilight. And every night at twilight, while seven siblings stood on two feet each and held one another with warm arms, and kissed one another with wistful lips, one sister shrank down to a chaffinch, or a vulture, or a heart-faced owl.

Not aster, you see, but feathers that she must weave for them: seven shirts of feathers from seven different birds—and those seven birds all the same blood.

(For their mother had damned them to feathers all their lives long, but she had not thought to specify the bones of a bird rather than those of a man—or a woman, or neither, or both—under the barbs, barbules, and quills.)

Seven different shirts from seven different birds—and eight siblings who all turned to swans, but for one.

They seven laughed their human laughs and sang their human songs. And when they had filled five precious minutes, they turned to their sister, avian and small, and plucked every feather from her living skin with their human fingers.

She could not weep; and she would not cry out.

They heaped the feathers in a ring: glossy crow feathers, silent owl feathers, speckled sparrow feathers. And in their centre, a little, naked girl-bird, with nothing in her eyes but pain.

When they finished, they seven, with down in their hair and sister blood under their nails, they stepped back. Sorrowed. Turned away.

Turned back.

They cocked their long necks and listened as she pushed herself to standing with her two human hands, her two human feet. And as she gathered her own feathers in her arms and set, once again, to weaving, they cried out, with their trumpets and their quavering hoots, all the horror and suffering and shame their sister dared not voice.


End file.
